Hi there, thank you for visiting my website! I’m Koosje, and I’m an Illustrator living in Amsterdam. I love drawing and I do it every day. On this website I hope to inspire you to develop a drawing habit too. Here you will find my newest drawings and blogs, fun facts about me as an artist, and my art classes.

Drawing People

People are intriguing

Observing people. It’s so fun. And interesting too. To see how people move, how they communicate with each other. To look at body language. To look at their style of clothing, haircut, their characteristics and features.

That’s why I enjoy drawing people so much. It’s a great practice, as well as an interesting way to spend time.

Here are two drawings I did during a visit to the museum. Instead of looking at the artwork, I looked at the people looking at art:

Sometimes people just move too fast to capture any details. I then just try to move fast with my pen or pencil on paper as well. At least then I can capture the essence. And if needed, I can always add details later:

I find it harder to draw people I know well. I feel the need to make it look like them, and because of that, i always manage to mess that part up. Luckily, I don’t mind too much and neither do they. Here’s a dear friend sitting on the couch:

It’s pretty amazing how much you can capture using a think, rainbow pencil and a continuous line. Working fast, not getting caught up in the details:

This drawing resulted in a fun conversation with one of the women I drew here. She turned out to be an artist too:

This was just a delightful 2 hours of drawing:

A lunch drawing – some of the stuff on the counter, my meal, my drink, and some of the other visitors in the lunch restaurant:

Koosje Koene

Hi I'm Koosje. I'm an illustrator and art teacher in Amsterdam, where I was born and raised. I went to school to study graphic design, then worked for ten years as an award-winning professional photographer. But eventually my love of drawing and painting took over and I became an illustrator. My illustrations have been published in many Dutch magazines and in 2011, I began blogging and started developing and teaching online art classes. In 2014 I founded Sketchbook Skool, which is a flourishing community of artists from around the world of all skill levels.
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